This blog is about answers to the big questions – how will we keep the lights on, what kind of cars will we drive (will we drive?) and how will we feed ourselves – in a post oil world, and a world where we can’t afford to keep burning things and throwing things away. Energy, Transport and Food are the three big issues.

It’s about ideas and policies, innovation and change, engineering our way out of this mess we’re in – it’s about the next Industrial Revolution and the journey to a low impact lifestyle, Zero carbon living if you like.

It’s a place to comment on the news, to share ideas, get feedback – all that kind of stuff. I hope it will become a forum where these things that need to be talked about, get talked about and through that get acted on.

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I really want you to post comments so we’re keeping it simple – no registering required and so you don’t need a password or a log-in. Comments are not moderated, although inappropriate or spammy comments may be deleted. Blogs (in my limited experience) seem to read best when short and to the point. A challenge for all of us. And finally … we like fair play, speak your mind by all means but please do so with a regard for the feelings of others.

We reserve the right to edit or delete comments that do not adhere to this standard.

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All the articles on this blog are written by me, but may sometimes be edited by members of my team at Ecotricity – to help me out.

This blog is moderated by the Ecotricity team, and all costs associated with it are covered by Ecotricity.

I am the founder and shareholder of Ecotricity.

There are no ‘paid for’ posts or advertising.

We reserve the right to edit comments that are too long or inappropriate or to not publish them at all.

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91 responses to “About this blog”

After one visit to the Ecotricity website I decided to become a customer. I feel empowered that I can choose a company that is green at heart. It is direct action. In this vein, I have an idea for your ideas box: How about making it possible for people to invest in a share of a wind turbine? What better way of giving something back to the planet than leaving a share of a turbine in your will?

@Roger Sheldon – Glad to have you with us Roger, appreciate your support. Giving people the chance to own a piece of a windmill is a good idea. Not as easy as it sounds, but far from impossible. Something we hope to get to before long – it’s on our list. Cheers.

@Gerry 321 – No Hydrogen projects yet but we’re in discussion with a couple of pilot schemes to see if we can help them with their wind energy. Personally I’m not sure that Hydrogen should have a big role to play as an energy source, but I’m for exploring all avenues – the solution we’re ultimately looking for will be like a jigsaw puzzle, where even small parts are important.

How about tidal stream? We’re developing a novel bladeless water turbine that overcomes many of the reliability problems facing this sector – fancy getting involved?

Also, regarding ownership of wind turbines – check out http://www.energy4all.co.uk, they set-up community based windmill owning co-operatives. I’ve met Andrew, their Chairman and Marna, their CEO and really believe in what they are doing. I almost bought into a Co-op in Norwich they set up but needed the cash to develop my tidal turbine, you can get up to 10% return on investment which is spectacular in comparison to bank saving rates.

Dale – why do Ecotricity NOT make more of an effort to engage in education at your turbine sites ? One of the things that always amazes me is what little people actually know about turbines and how many myths there are out there, myths that are often ‘picked – up’ on because there is nobody dispelling them !! They see turbines as something in the distance and very rarely get ‘up close and personal’ with the turbines. When they do get close enough and are provided with a little more info (just a few key stats) they often change their minds about turbines completely and turn from potentially ‘anti’ to ‘pro’. I work at the GreenPark turbine and facilitate educational visits to the visitors centre and i feel that given just an average hours worth of education most people are happy to (using a BWEA phrase) ’embrace wind’. Do Ecotricity have any plans to help facilitate such education in future ? CHEERS – Ian Gough

@ Ian
Hi Ian, I think we probably do make rather more of an effort than you know. For example we’ve been running the Ecotech Centre in Norfolk for the last year, having saved it from bankruptcy and a large part of the work being done there is the hosting of school visits. We built a turbine in the backyard there and added to it a viewing platform so that people can climb the turbine and see things from the very top. It’s a massive enhancement to the visit to be able to get this close. That people like turbines better once they’ve seen one is a truth we’re more than familiar with – it’s why we build turbines where people live and where they can see them, and it’s why we built the turbine at Green Park – enabling the school visits that you do. We’re currently working on some key stage information packs and trialling other works through the Ecotech centre before we roll out nationally. Hope that helps.

I like what you and your company is doing. I like the ideas behind it, and the drive is not for profits. Take care of your country first. Then please, please, please come over to the U.S., set up shop in the Midwest, (Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, preferably Nebraska though.) where there is basically a constant wind tunnel, and get us off the expensive grids powered by gas and coal, hundreds of miles away.

There is plenty of farmland around where I am, and since the farmers and the rest of Nebraska got screwed over in the corn/ethanol plant and fuel deal, I am sure the kickbacks you and your company offer would be welcome with open arms after some education about wind.

Sorry, I don’t mean to sound like a desperate nut job, but I am sick of paying high prices for things that I shouldn’t have to, because that is the way it has been for the last 100 years or more, and I don’t have the resources to do but small green innovations very locally.

@ Darkshine – Hi Darkshine, thanks for your post and support. We’d like to set up in the US someday not too far away, there’s much that could be done there and we think there’s something we could bring to the party. So maybe coming to a state near you one day soon. Cheers.

Hi, great website, blog and all praise to what Ecotricity is doing to get us off the Oil Addiction.

In my locality there is a company which is trailing tidal wave electricity generation. I didn’t approach them yet but our group- Transition Town Westcliff – would like to work with them closer in the future.

Hi Kamil, yes definitely we’ll be looking to get involved in tide and wave power as it approaches a commercial state – it’s early R&D right now. In our opinion Wave and Tidal power have a lot of potential, certainly the UK has plenty of both – the key though will be achieving a competitive cost per unit, and this requires efficient reliable machines. This will take time. Cheers.

Like some of your other commentators, I’d be very interested in investing in an ecotricity wind turbine, as I live in central London, with neither the wind speed available in my area nor option to capture solar energy. Is ecotricity up for this kind of project?

Hi Dale,
Just watched a clip of your car build on treehugger. I wish you the very best of luck and I am excited to see the continuation of the project.

this blog is already put in to my reader and I will follow it from today :).

Me myself is trying something similar but on a very different scale and with a lot less means (so far 0). Please check it out if you have the time, http://www.tellgren.com. Currently trying to set up collaboration with some guys in the USA who have gotten farther than me. I just love the internet 😉

Hi I was wondering if the “Recent Comments” list on the RHS could be a bit longer, or that there is a separate page with a longer list. The recent posts get scrolled off the end really quickly (less than 24 hours) now.

Hello Dale,
Do you remember me? I lived on sites with you years ago. I have been reading your severn barrage proposals, and it sounds great from the energy angle, but you have not addressed any of the other issues involved, particularly important being the huge environmental impact it would certainly have. I think you should present at least some comment or reference to this before asking people to sign.
Other than that I think you’re doing great. I saw a poster of you the other day in Bristol, it was a bit spooky! Keep it up,
Alix

Going back to what Roger said, it’s something that has played on my mind also. I realise carbon offset is a controversial subject and it’s vulnerable to all sorts of different greenwash. But surely you could potentially offer some of the best carbon offsetting on planet earth?!

People are going to carry on flying and will buy luxurious electrical items. So why not give them the opportunity to balance some of that with investment in new windmills? Rather than in planting trees that may take too long to absorb the carbon or may never reach maturity. If you’re worried about people using it to increase their carbon output, change the ‘offset’ part of the name and supply it as part of a package – maybe send them an energy saving instruction booklet, a voucher to join ecotricity, some energy saving lightbulbs, a car tyre pressure guage etc.

Hi Paul, we don’t actually sponsor these tables we undertake the research and publish the data. The data itself is all in the public domain, coming from OFGEM and the suppliers themselves, we send our findings to each supplier and give them the chance to make corrections, and then we publish. It couldn’t be more open, fair and accurate really.
Cheers.

Hi Dale, I am just waiting to get the correct bill from EDF and then I am straight over to Ecotricity. This company represents everything that is right with true business and not the market-centric shareholder-run faceless profit machines that have put us in the current mess. Please don’t ever sell out! I am currently working on a helical savonius , a bit what I think your urbine will be like. I will send you a vid if it turns out to make a decent amount of power. The idea of mine is the same as some of the current US versions on the market except I reckon you can manufacture them very cheaply but the US guys are selling theirs for thousands of pounds – not in the spirit of true change!
Keep it up – Cheers.

Sorry for double post, but can I also add, that I like the Ecotricity pricing ethic. So many Green companies (food,clothes,ethical products) sell their products at a premium. So they are basically saying that you can be green and ethical as long you are nice and rich. There is something amazingly wrong with that philosophy but your company says “everyone can change the world at no extra cost” – amazing!

I was very disappointed when plans for your Sport City turbine in Manchester fell through – especially as I would have been able to see it from where I work. You’re a little light on turbines in the North West, so have you any more plans around Manchester? Or can I help by suggesting a site?

Hi Tim, I was v disappointed myself when Sport City fell through. I think we may have an outside chance or resurrecting that though. meanwhile yes pls do by all means suggest somewhere in the NW, we def are a bit light as you say. Cheers.

I live in East London and would like to develop wind turbines that sit on the roofs of Council flats. I read a not so recent article that they vibrate too much for this to be an option. Do you know if this is still the case?

I think their presence would a) reduce tennants’ bills and b) heighten our awareness of the need and availability of renewable energy. Is this a project ecotricity have looked into?

Just a suggestion: any chance of a permanent link from the Ecotricity site to this one (somewhere along the top or the bottom perhaps)? There is usually a link, but whichgreen and the progress report are currently occupying the space where it normally goes…

Hi Dale,
I’ve spent hours on the net looking for the best green electricity supplier and Ecotricity looks like a very original and forward thinking company. I’ve read about your achievements and I really applaud your foresight and commitment.

I’m weighing up the affordability of green energy. I don’t mind paying more to help the environment but this article just didn’t sit right with me… You fully deserve a reward for your achievements in working to turn around the energy industry but can I be sure that the sacrifices I make to pay for green energy will be for the good of the environment?

I look forward to your response in the hope that my fears will be allayed and that I can go ahead with my plan to enjoy receiving power from Ecotricity.

Our house is home to the extended family, four adults and one little one – per capita it would look very different (closer to UK average).

I don’t have a 200k wind car, but we have put more than that so far into the design and build of such a car – you can follow the progress here. I believe it to be a very important piece of work and one that will more than pull it’s own weight in terms of the debate that we will be able to stimulate and the demonstration value of a home grown wind powered car – the idea that we can actually power all the UK’s cars this way and the spin off projects we can already see.

In terms of you being able to ‘make sure the sacrifices you might make, by joining ecotricity, are good for the environment’ – I can tell you that we match the price of your local Big Six supplier – if you are with them then it won’t cost you a penny to be with us. We’re not the market’s cheapest though, so there may be a smallish annual cost if you’ve already switched to save money.

But, for every pound you spend with us we will spend a pound building new windmills (have done each of the last five years anyway, hope to continue that – planning allowing….. 🙂 – and that is not only the biggest per bill or per capita spend in the UK – it’s bigger than all the other electricity companies put together.

Ecotricity is a marvellous idea. I am moving to a small house in Kirkbymoorside next month, and have signed up for Ecotricity. I will be there from the first of September. I was not looking forward to running a windmill in the garden. Would heating with wind energy be as sustainable as heating with briquettes/pellets?

The forum is brilliant for great minds alike to communicate.
At the pace it’s growing it really will be a central meeting point for us to discuss issues that need to be talked about and like you said “to be acted on”
Just finished putting my blog together and linked you in.
You’re inspiring to a lot of us out there. Thank you.

This is a bit off to the side but you interviewed a friend of mine recently for a systems manager job. Charis Lawrence, she’s brilliant and a good commited Hippie at heart.
You liked her ERP skills but she didn’t have the MS qualifiactions.. which you could provide later..
She’s being made redundant and I wondered if you have anything for her.. ? Cheeky but hey

Hi
I’m really glad to have found this website. You’re great to be doing this and I’m inspired by the fact that you not only dreamed it but made your dreams real.

I’m an artist (painter) living in France. I’ve had a simple idea for generating energy from cars using wind, which surprisingly, no one seems to be using.

Without training in engineering I don’t know how to make it a reality but it seems to be a terrible waste to let it go without developing. It would have a great many other applications and is extremely practical.

Can you recommend a course of action which I could take in order to make it a reality.
regards
TJ

I am intrigued by your idea for generating energy from cars using wind. However, I would like to know where the energy would come from, if not ultimately from the fuel that powers the car?

The only instance of a proposal of a car designed to positively generate power from airflow that I have seen is this concept car that was the object of an “exchange of views” not long ago in the thread The Wind Car – Episode 10 of 6.

Of course in this instance, the “wind” power actually derives from the turbulence generated by the forward motion of the vehicles passing underneath. It can reasonably be argued that the energy they capture is otherwise wasted but it is also the case that its true source is the fossil fuel that powers the trucks.

I can foresee some horrific public liability issues that would have to be mitigated before any highway authority would feel able to install them.

I confidently predict that turbines that size and in that location, having a slight detrimental effect on the aerodynamic efficiency and weight of the car when accelerating or cruising – and generating under braking conditions only – would contribute less power over the vehicle’s life than was originally expended in their design and manufacture.

I got rid of my car for good 12 years ago, I live in a city , as do most people, and it’s been fine. So long as public transport is reasonable then it’s not a big deal. I rent a car when I need one or think a bit more about how to avoid the need.

BTW – can you sort the blog to most recent post first at the top of the page rather than at the bottom?)

like the car and looking forward to buying 1 out of savings from our collective energy bills and reduced taxes.
why are people still anti-wind or at best indifferent? this to me remains the big question when it appears that international law/policy has turned against oil and its friends and is looking forward to a new cleaner brighter future, free of mineing and the black-stuff. if the new oil is to be a mix of renewables and engineering then isn’t looking at britain like looking at the new opec. this should be shouted from the hills……..britain the texas(and new york)of europe, saudi arabia,russia and qatar appears out of thin-air. i myself am very excited about my peoples future. if only someone would tell them. dale.

Trouble is Reece that the UK energy grid, or any other countries energy grid, can’t cope with more than 20% wind due to its unpredictability. Spare generating capacity is needed to ‘back-up’ wind and this is currently 20% and unless Governments start building dirty coal or gas powered Power Stations again this will remain at 20% or maybe even reduce to 10% as our old power stations are retired. People talk of a European super-grid but this is nearly impossible to implement due to differing standards and politics and also according to my friends at RES weather systems are large enough to knock out wind renewables across the whole of Europe for as much as 4 days at a time.

that maybe true today, tomorrow however baseload will be a mix of tidal stream, tidal barrage, battery(electric car) hydro(norwegian fjords) solar (domestic roofs) geothermal and a thousand types of decentralised supplies.
effeciency will be the largest supply as for every unit saved = 3(ish) units you no longer need to produce as the transmission of power is so wastefull. with new l.e.d’s, o.le.c.d’s, efficent fridges, dumb terminals and all the other electrical goods that now have colourfull stickers on you will find that not a single private $, £ or even rupee will fund any of the dirty technologys again. that includes neuclear because there simply is not the market.
renewables do not have people chained to them nor are they bad for your children or your home. they are not confined to any particular continent and therefore attract all the money. money creates all the solutions to all your future technical problems.
i know all this sounds a bit rosy but with domestic solar reaching grid parity in the next 5(ish) years in the uk. it also looks a bit rosy aswell.
rule britania

in my original post above i was trying to say that the current energy crisis/global warming/climate change or whatever it is called is a great oppertunity. an oppertunity especially for britain to become 1 of the most energy secure countries in the world. and much wealthier for it.
in my opinion the trouble today is that people see it as a great problem. something that is going to cost them. when the truth is that it will save or even make you money as an indervidual or as a nation by being more efficent. this is what people need to be told.
anybody can argue with me on this point but i believe the true tipping point will be when as in 2007 it was how many houses you owned, the conversation becomes how much money you saved or made on energy. when tv’s “homes under the hammer” becomes “bill’s under the hammer” and “scrapheap challenge” becomes “efficency challenge”. and especially the day when mr clarkson declares petrol is for girls.
i believe this to be the true challenge of today. to simply turn wind(all renewables) into the hot-topic instead of hot-air.
the world just needs a decent salesman to bring the inevitable forward.
(my interest in all this came about after a friend of mine decided not to buy my car(lpg) but to convert his house on the same princeible instead. the car has saved me thousands over the years and my friend is now over the moon with his bills).
what do you think dale? am i full of it?

I note that one of the waste disposal companies potentially involved is called “Augean”. The Augean stables were the ancient Greek mythological mess that were considered so filthy that they could never be cleaned. The fact that Hercules was able to do so was testement to his powers.

Do these people have no sense of irony?

Additionally, I assume that the licencing of these sites will be in the hands of local councils who can give the matter the same level of intellectual rigour with which they adjudicate on the siting of wind turbines.

Erm, Dale. Love the blog but am actually a Good Energy customer – hope I can still play? I was considering your intro comments about “will we still drive?”. For me, the jury’s definitely still out but there’s a new book out by Kingsley Dennis & John Urry called After The Car (2009, Polity). Engaging read. Urry has written a few papers on the system of automobility which are fascinating. Where do we go from the thick sludge of petroleum-based personal travel? I would argue that it has to be a new system, probably still involving the car, that reconfigures social behaviour. Without it, we are simply attempting to replace a hard infrastructure with a technocentric approach that mimicks our current system and fails to asks fundamental questions about the utility of our vehicles. I mean, is there anything wrong – really wrong – with just having a vehicle that does the job and doesn’t pamper to class, identity, status or gender virtues? So, when we get to grips with a radically designed infrastructure, the micro-generation landscape surely starts to look very different doesn’t it?

I’m interested in what you’re saying about perceptions of cars – I have always found expensive / gas guzzling cars ridiculous and don’t know why people think they need such things to assert their status. For me it only singles them out as pretentious and selfish, as they have no regard for the environment. It will take a process of re-education for other people to think the way we do, but also the way we work may need to change.

People travel, and are expected to travel, great distances in the name of work – often internationally just for a meeting. People also expect to be able to fly overseas on a whim, or for several holidays per year. Just a few generations ago neither of these was even an option – it seems to me that we could learn to live without them again if people stopped viewing these recently acquired luxuries as ‘the norm’ and saw them for the wasteful excesses of the modern age that they are. With modern telecommunications there really is no excuse.

I am a happy customer of Ecotricity and I love wind turbines. Earlier this year my passion for renewable energy grew and I made my own turbine. With a few friends of mine we hope to develop some really cool designs.

Does anyone have any advice on how to get more involved? I went to CAT in Wales, great place!

You will need to scroll down to find it, there’s loads of pictures showing the stages of development.

On my pet topic of Tidal Stream, my company Green-Tide Turbines Ltd is about to get off the blocks, we are getting close to raising our first round of funding and starting our Cambridge University research programme – I’ll keep you all posted on results and progress. Also bidding to get some very large EU grant money which will be needed as I estimate I will need to raise a total of £20m to get this concept to market – expensive business building turbines!

In the first instance I would suggest you drop me a mail via the form here with a few details (who you are, what you want to speak about etc), then I can forward to Dale’s PA to arrange a phone call if appropriate. I am sure you can appreciate that he is a very busy man.

Are you sure you want to be posting your phone number on the internets BTW? Let me know of not and I can take it down for you…

Over the years I have followed your career with much interest. Your latest venture, the Nemises electric car project is something I had attempted back in 2006 under the “Triumph” brand name. The project was itself called “Triumph for the Environment” but on account of BMW owning the marque the venture was eventually slaughtered in the High Court.

There are many similarities for example I attempted to interest Sir Richard Branson in the Electric Car World Land Speed Record….and I remember advocating a throaty sports car noise simulation at a Bertone Design Studio meeting in Turin. They obviously thought I was crackers at the time however I learnt recently that the US is to enforce electric car makers to create noise for pedestrians.

Good luck with this project anyway, but what I am contacting you about is compressed air cavern batteries, and the potential for them to be used in football stadiums under the field of play.

Have you heard of small scale cavern batteries being used with off-peak wind energy? Do you think there is a market for it?

Hi Dale, I’ve been inspired by your work and Ecotricity, and I used to love it when they were talked about on BBC working Lunch were I think I first heard about you!

I’ve been reading the excellent conversations above and I know the following idea might be questionable in terms of a company and it’s profit making.. however, how about working with councils to encourage or enable households to install their own Anaerobic digestion plants which could take bio-degardable waste and produce bio-gas for the home (and possible back to the gas grid!)?

(have sent you a direct email, but in the interest of framing an open discussion)

What are your thoughts on activating a Global Wind Energy Movement – which can apply the kind of pressure FOR wind energy that the “Nuclear Power No Thanks” movement applied AGAINST nuclear power back in the 1980s?

To my mind we haven’t seen this kind of positive fervor from people……ALL people, for wind energy yet.

It would be great to see Ecotricity, Vestas (and other successful pure wind energy leaders) start to stand together to provide people with the requisite platform for this Movement.

I am a customer of yours in 3 ways; at home for electricity, switchover in 4 days! I’ve also signed up for the gas trials as well, looking forward to hearing more information about this.

I’m also a Director of Smartbunker, we use Ecotricity to supply our Datacentre. This makes us the only Datacentre in the UK to be zero-carbon.

We are a about to embark on a large PR exercise to promote Smartbunker, with it’s primary selling point being the zero-carbon. Please can someone contact me about this as we have a number of angles that could do with your input.

I just wished to say that I wish we had more forward-thinking companies like Ecotricity in the US. We have energy providers offering green alternatives, but none (at least in my area) who will match the major providers’ prices. I want to do more to increase the amount of green energy in the grid, but I can’t afford the additional costs. Again, I agree with your philosophy that green needs to become the new mainstream and be affordable to everyone.

Every time I drop in on the exercise floor, at any of my local “Health Clubs”, I want to Dale to reinvent the “human driven turbine……Last seen in the Victorian Workhouse!

It seems we are HAPPY to run on TREADMILLS driven by fossil fuel energy, cooled by energy, and drive to enjoy this experience too!

My most local GYM revealed the staggering fact that 90% of members lived within 2km. Despite this the car park has just been ENLARGED (more energy!!), to accommodate another 15 cars.

The gym owner in question has just had a PR disaster with 90day cancellation policies, applied even for the seriously medically unwell!

‘Bout time you hooked up your gyms to Ecotricity, or Dale Vince, investigated; The HUMAN GENERATOR GYM!!

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We are very much behind green energy and are open to any cooperation which will take us a step closer to a completely sustainable lifestyle. I am British and based in China now where I manufacture many products.

I have some interesting projects here which I will be happy to discuss with you. One of our products is environment protection machinery such as tracked dumpers.

I believe the green energy industry needs low cost research and development which I can help with here in China.

Here in China we have a wealth of intellectual and engineering resources to tap.

Please contact me if you feel we can help in any way with manufacturing or sourcing products.

Dear Dale
Our ambition is too build a”peoples-share” in solar energy installments. We believe that people in Denmark, Uk and the rest of the Europe want too do more for the environment. Our mission is too give people easy access too real green investments and for them too be able too make a difference this way.
Please get in touch at anders@nordicsolar.eu and I can send you more information if you want.
Yours sincerely
Anders Søgaard

I have been an Ecotricity customer for a few years for electricity and now gas. I like feeling that my money is contributing to reducing carbon emissions, the customer service is great and I don’t get switched to a higher tariff for being a loyal customer. All is good!

However my family’s circumstances have changed and money is extremely tight. We make an effort to reduce energy consumption (I’m an energy assessor) and have insulated as much as we can afford to. We are strapped for space so can’t downsize, our house is occupied 24/7 so it is difficult to reduce heating hours. We have a South facing roof, but I am concerned about taking on more debt.

I know that energy prices are continuing to rise, and the long winter and pump failure on the gas import pipeline at Bacton have not done anything to reduce prices, only to worsen them.

I want to stay with Ecotricity, but I am not sure I can afford to. A quick comparison shows I can save at least £250 a year by switching both fuels.

Do you still need to be tagged to British Gas prices for electricity? Aren’t wind generation prices more stable? Solar panel costs have reduced significantly, so I’m guessing renewables in general are becoming cheaper. I would love for renewable energy to be affordable for everyone, thus increasing demand and reducing carbon emissions. Is reducing the price something Ecotricity could work towards?

Is there anything that can be done to help me and others? Can my local transition group bulk buy from Ecotricity, or could we get a community turbine?

I just thought I would give you a chance to respond before I consider switching.

Yes considered, but quite frankly Grean Deal is a rip off that I don’t want to support. Lets take away energy efficiency grants and replace them with a loan, then charge ridiculous interest rates on the loan – er no, I don’t think so.

I totally feel your pain – I am in the same boat. It seems many of us in the UK (and elsewhere) are having to look very seriously at our outgoings at the moment.

We’ve operated our price matching of regional standard tariffs (we only match British Gas on gas price not electric BTW) for years in order to give ‘Green for the price of Brown’. It’s not so much the price of wind energy (ie. all electricity costs the same on the market no matter which type of generation) that dictates our tariff price, but our business model, which is two-fold:

(1) our customers get our fair price promise in that we’ll match the standard tariffs of the Big Six energy suppliers so that a significant number of people can switch to Ecotricity and get a green outcome for their bill money without paying a penny more; and

(2) we will then spend any profits from that on building more green energy (Britain still gets only about 3-4% of its electricity from wind and about 9.5% from all renewables. As a country we should be at 12.4% by now to reach our 2020 carbon reduction targets, so we need to keep spending any profits on building and developing more renewables and renewable technology).

Though we price match the Big Six standard regional tariff, we don’t make the profits per customer that they do, because the Big Six have massive economies of scale (each has 5 million+ customers compared to our 70,000) that enables them to run their business (per customer) a lot cheaper – this is probably what also allows them to offer new tariff deals frequently to entice new customers (but not for existing customers) that are “loss-leaders” ie. tariffs that won’t make any money for perhaps the first 12 months until prices are raised back to the level of their standard tariff. By then they’ve got people hooked.

We have been looking at alternative pricing models but we’re not ready to launch just yet. We’ve had a few issues to deal with that have delayed the project, but it’s still very much our plan to introduce this. As with everything we do, we feel strongly that it’s more important to get it right than do it quickly.

I’m not able to give timescales at the moment, but please be reassured that we’re working on it.

I hope you do decide to stay with us, we’d miss you but understand if you decide to go elsewhere.

The extra £250 a year you’re paying to Ecotricity has helped to make Vince Dale’s personal net worth more than £50m and has enabled him to follow vanity projects such as his electric sports car and his personal football club which was paid for with an interest free loan from ecotricity, the Company he owns outright.

Within the cord these impulses are distributed to higher or lower centers.
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Hi,
I am very glad that I have found you guys :). I hate giving my money to shi..y companies that ruin the planet. I would like to know what can be done, in order to promote Ecotricity. I already asked for car stickers,which I received. I have put one on my front window, wife’s car and my car. The only problem is that I think a tiny small sticker it is not enough. I think Ecotricity’s clients/people in general should have more options to choose from, if they wish to help promote Ecotricity. Me personally, I believe that Ecotricity is people’s company because it helps create a better future for all of us. I have this strong impression that Ecotricity can benefit a lot,if its customers can easily contribute in promoting Ecotricity (a company that actually cares ). So, without writing thousands of pages, I would like to suggest, that maybe you should have a corner on your website which allows customers to write cool ideas about how to advertise Ecotricity and what they can offer. For example, I asked for car sticker but maybe I would like to have, what I call, ” A Ecotricity Car” meaning that the car has a cool big sticker on it. All for free or a small amount. There are soo many things that can be done! Pens, caps, gloves, t-shirts, mobile – phone cases, cups, sun shades, etc, .. plus other original ideas from your customers. Just think about it, there are more than 80,000 of us let loose, ..and growing :D.
Thanks,
Sorin.M.

Hi,I am very glad that I have found this blog . For years I’m searching everything about free energy and transportation vehicles free of any charges or fuel consumption and how that may become possible. But now im curtain that this will never become possible. Because countries and governments don’t want to lose their profit from fuel. One ordinary man from bulgaria who works in workshop has made an engine that works without energy recharging or need for any kind of fuel. He patented his invention but government show little interest : http://www.standartnews.com/english/read/bulgarian_invents_the_first_nonfuel_magnetic_engine_-1481.html

Hello just wanted to give you a brief heads up and let you know a few of the pictures aren’t loading properly. I’m not sure why but I think its a linking issue. I’ve tried it in two different web browsers and both show the same results.

Zero Carbonista

This blog is about answers to the big questions - how will we keep the lights on, what kind of cars will we drive (will we drive?) and how will we feed ourselves - in a post oil world, and a world where we can't afford to keep burning things and throwing things away. Energy, Transport and Food are the three big issues.